The sergeant passed the discharge notice back to the soldier and the soldier handed it back to Gretchen.
She glared at the sergeant. “I’m not going to allow you to take him from me.”
The sergeant’s expression hardened. “That is not your decision to make. Please ensure that your husband presents himself here by the date specified.”
“Next!” said the soldier.
Gretchen got to her feet with as much dignity as she could muster. All eyes followed her as she left the recruiting office.
Part III
22
Early the following Tuesday, December 12, a Kübelwagen drew up in an icy puddle at the entrance to the apartment block and two uniformed officers jumped out. The rain had turned to sleet. Gretchen was preparing to leave for the bakery when there was a loud banging on her door. She opened it, and the two officers, dripping wet, barged past her, lifted Oskar from his chair and manhandled him down the stairs.
A shocked and disturbed Gretchen shouted after them, “You can’t take my husband. Look at him, he’s not well. Where are you taking him?”
She got no answer. They bundled him down the stairs, put him in the back of the Kübelwagen, and drove away through the rain.
Frau Tannhäuser had witnessed the whole thing. “SS-Feldjägerkorps,” she said, shaking her head.
Feldjägerkorps – the dreaded military police of the SS. People called them ‘head-hunters’ for the dogged way they hunted down Wehrmacht deserters, shooting them out of hand in the street.
She was 15 minutes late arriving at the bakery.
“I’m sorry, Herr Korn,” she said, shaking the rainwater from her coat. She told him what had happened.
“I’m sure they’ll realize their mistake and return Oskar to you,” he said. “Sometimes they recognize their mistakes. They let me go.”
Gretchen thanked Herr Korn for his reassuring words. It was the first time he’d called Oskar by his first name.
The dough mixture included five per cent sawdust. Gretchen objected. “Three per cent filler tasted terrible,” she said.
Herr Korn bent his head in shame. “I know, but what can I do? We need to add bulk to the mixture to meet the demand.”
She got home by midday to an empty apartment. She was hungry, but had lost her appetite, somehow. She knocked on Hans’s door.
He invited her in. “What’s the matter? Is it Oskar? Is he ill?”
She shook her head. “He’s been taken away by the Feldjägerkorps. They want to conscript him into the Volkssturm.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said.
“I know. I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.” She dabbed at her eyes to stop the tears.
He reached out and closed the door. Then he pulled her into an embrace. “Don’t worry, Gretchen, I’m sure they’ll discover their mistake and bring him back.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes, I’m certain. Sit down, I’ll make you some tea.”
She spent the afternoon with Hans. He lit a fire and they had a meal together. He told her how he lost his leg at the Siege of Leningrad. A Russian mortar round demolished the building where he was sheltering. He was trapped under falling masonry. His troop pulled him out and got him to a field hospital in time to save his life, but his leg was crushed beyond repair.
As the evening drew in, she confessed that she didn’t want to leave. “I can’t face the empty apartment.” She faced him, put her hands on his chest.
Hans took her hand in both of his. “You could spend the night here if you like.”
Circumstances overcame her natural reserve, and she gave in to insidious temptation. It was the one and only time she had ever broken her marriage vows. She returned to her own apartment in the dead of night, riddled with guilt, her mind full of memories of new and delicious experiences that she would cherish for the rest of her life.
Two days later, Gretchen’s young friend, Martha, came calling, looking for bread.
Gretchen asked if she’d received any news from her fiancé.
“Nothing since that last letter,” said Martha. “How’s Oskar?”
Gretchen told her what had happened. “I’m very much afraid. If they conscript him, he could get shot for disobeying orders. If they decide he’s unfit to serve, they might shoot him. There’s no mercy nowadays for anyone judged to be a burden on the Reich.”
“Your husband has served the Fatherland well. Didn’t you say he has an Iron Cross?”
Gretchen nodded. “Yes, from the last war.”
Martha put a comforting arm around Gretchen’s shoulders. “Oskar’s a hero. How can they mistreat a national hero? Wait and see, they’ll send him home again soon.”
Mid-afternoon on the following Monday, December 18, Martha Engels’s prediction came true. The Kübelwagen drew up outside Kaiser Wilhelm apartment block 2. Oskar was bundled out and dumped at the side of the road. The neighbors quickly alerted Gretchen and she took him upstairs to their apartment.
He seemed unharmed. She asked him what happened.
Oskar looked at her blankly.
“You’ve been gone a week. Don’t you remember anything?”
He bared his teeth and snarled at her, a flash of anger in his eyes. “Leave me be.”
Gretchen was taken aback. “Oh, Oskar, did they hurt you? Show me where it hurts.”
The light of anger in his eyes faded as quickly as it had flared. “I’m hungry.”
She hugged him. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
She made him a small meal. He devoured it. When he’d finished, they fed the pigeon.
23
Operation ‘Watch on the Rhine’ began on December 16 with the deployment of a large detachment of Panzer tanks and infantry through the Ardennes. The counteroffensive took the Allies by surprise, and the German army made significant progress, creating a breech in the Allied lines and splitting parts of the Western Allied force in two.
For the first five days, radio accounts of the operation were triumphant and optimistic. Anton was ecstatic. He could see how a decisive surgical strike through the western front could enable the Wehrmacht to split the Allies’ forces in two. The peace settlement that would inevitably follow would allow a diplomatic entente in
